Promeris Warning; flea and tick med

Just came across this on another forum: Promeris Warning. I'll cop - paste two messages:
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A warning was just cross-posted about the new flea preventive ProMeris.

I had heard about this and based on that, had even recommended it to friends wintering iin Florida whose Welsh Springer has been battling sand fleas. I just called and left a message warning them.

Apparently, ProMeris has caused allergic reactions, some quite severe, with both dogs and humans. I did a Goggle search and found numerous reports. To be on the safe side, I also did a Snopes/Urban Myths search to make sure this was valid. So many of these alerts turn out to be bunk.

However, found nothing on Snopes. I'll stick with the tried and true Frontline Plus and Advantix.

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Message:
Cross-post- Important Flea Preventive Info Sent: Sun Apr 13

Message:
I just received this product alert and wanted to pass the info along ASAP. It was sent to me by a trusted friend and vet. This happened to a friend of hers. The vet said one of the most surprising things is that Fort Dodge is actually paying the med bills without a fight as in the past dealings she’s had with them, they are not so agreeable. That in itself makes me extremely wary of the product.

This is a very important message to my family & friends who have dogs-cats–and to alert you to the hazard of using a new Flea & Tick Preventative called ProMeris.

This is a new product designed to be a more effective product than other flea/tick treatments that was just released this year. It is available thru a vet and not currently on-line. I got ProMeris this week for my 7 dogs (6 Huskies & 1 Golden-Airedale), and the results were debilitating for nearly all of them-including me. Since my incident this week, my vet has pulled it from distribution and alerted the manufacturer, Fort Dodge.

Here are my results: Within less than 2 hours after applying, 4 of my dogs had vomited from 2-4 times, 3 were disoriented and stumbling, 1 was dragging his back leg, 1 was salivating. I had very similar symptoms like an allergic reaction-my lips were swollen, eyes very red, mucous membranes such as eyes, nose, and mouth were stinging. I was very disoriented-dizzy equilibrium and not able to drive. To make this a short story-all 7 of my dogs were admitted to the hospital for veterinarian care, and 3 of them remained for care, IV fluids and observation for 24 hours. I was in the emergency room. I’m home now and so are the dogs. We’re all feeling much better.

Vet bills were over $2,500 and Fort Dodge is paying for these. Not only can the product cause this reaction, it has a highly noxious odor that permeated the house and is just starting to dissipate after 3 days.

Your dogs/cats might not have the same reaction, but given my experience-I wanted to help you all become well-educated about the product

UPDATE - I’ve received a second warning on this product as well. Looks like something we should really be wary of!

My vet has discontinued the use of FrontLine Plus thinking that it is loosing it’s effectiveness with dogs who have used it for a long period of time. He now recommends Premerius. I tried a dose on one of my dogs and the smell was over powering. Poor Rowdy ran outside and was rolling on his back trying to get rid of the smell. He usually sleeps with me and whenever he was near, I developed a tremendous headache. Rowdy acted drained of energy and had fitful sleep for a couple of nights.

I will not use this product on the rest of my dogs and never again with Rowdy. I’ll go back to the Frontline Plus that has been very effective and non threatening to my fur-kids.

(source:for the love of dogs)
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We've been using Promeris where I work on both dogs and cats of various breeds and sizes and have not had a single animal reaction. The cat product came out last fall and the dog version early this year. I don't know that I have an exact number of pets we've used this on but it's quite a few.

We did have one owner however who seemed to have a slight reaction for a day or two to the smell of the product and called us. We recommended she try putting the Promaris on the dog then taking it for a 15 minute walk rather than staying inside with it and cuddling it right after application. She tried that the following month's application and reported no reactions to the smell and came back to buy more of it. The smell goes away after a day, although I rather like the smell, the dog one smells like Eucalyptus (clears my sinuses) and the cat one like bannanas (makes me hungry). :p

Reactions like the ones described in the post are in the product insert in case of 'oral injestion'. The product is designed to taste horrible so they don't lick it off, and reactions like the salivating etc. are part of the reaction, it would also have a similar effect on a human ingesting it oraly. We have yet to see or hear of reports of this reaction in any of our patients and we do warn them ahead of time so they know to make sure the animals don't lick it off themselves or each other. According to the information I got at a recent seminar about the product, even in the case of ingestion (short of a whole tube of it) the animal would recover from any reactions within 24-48 hours without lingering side effects.

We aren't switching all our supplies over to Promeris. In the case of outdoor cats Revolution is what we recommend, and in the case of cats with ticks we are recommending Frontline Plus. In dogs we prefer the Promeris as it works much faster on the fleas and lasts longer than Frontline plus which our clients love, especially those that have been battling fleas for a long time using Frontline.

Just wanted to add my experience with the product to the post if that's ok.

I have had experience with promeris and have been using it on my boxers as has my sister-in-law for several months. Those who are familiar with boxers know they are allergic to almost anything, and I always wonder what they will get into next. I can honestly say I have had no problems at all. However, I also read the packaging and talked to my veterinarian on the correct way to give it as well as what side effects had been seen in trials. don't we owe it to our dogs to ask these questions prior to usage??? Since it is made of different chemicals than the other flea and tick medications it does need to be treated with more care. My vet stated the biggest problem as stated by Fort Dodge was lethargy IF ingested. I made sure I put it on them and then turned them out for a couple hours. As a precaution my vet recommend not putting several dogs together in a small space as naturally they would probably come into contact or lick another dog and ingest it. It seems to me much of this is common sense. Is it possible with this many big dogs that they did lick it off of each other? As far as the smell goes, I don't think the smell is any worse than any other product I have used, but like dogs some of us are affected differently than others by smells and chemicals.